After 30 years of taking in gunk from the bottom of the bay, Channel Island is near its limit

Scott Mussell | Times PhotoA slurry of mud, sand and sediment flows into the Saginaw Bay Confined Disposal Facility - popularly known as Channel Island - from a pipe connected to a nearby dredging barge.

A plastic pipe is spewing black water onto a man-made island in Saginaw Bay.

The stinky stuff is coming from a dredging barge in the distance that's sucking up silt and pumping the contents into the Saginaw Bay Confined Disposal Facility.

"That material hasn't seen the light of day in a long time," says U.S. Army Corps of Engineers official Robert Ferguson, explaining the sewage-like smell.

The CDF, or Channel Island as it's called by locals, is celebrating an anniversary this year, but it's also nearing the end of its life.

When the Corps finished constructing the island in October 1978, it was designed to last about 10 years, and hold 10 million cubic yards of dredged material from the Lower Saginaw River and Bay, said Ken Drum, an engineering technician for the Corps in Detroit.

Alexander Cohn | Times PhotoShips dredge near Channel Island.

With modifications made since then, the CDF now has about 800,000 cubic yards, or eight years, of capacity left, said Angie Mundell, project manager for the Corps in Detroit.

Eight years may seem like a long time, but considering that it took more than 20 years to sight the recently finished Dredged Material Disposal Facility - which will hold spoils from the Upper Saginaw River - in Zilwaukee and Frankenlust townships, the Corps is already thinking about Channel Island's future.

The new facility for the Upper River is due to be used for the first time in November, and hold about 20 years worth of spoils.

The facility in the bay is constructed on what was once a small, natural island.

Some dikes that surround and divide the island into north and south cells, to keep river goop from leaking out, have been raised since 1988 to make more room for dredgings on the 283-acre land mass.

Mundell said the Corps doesn't have any plans in place yet for when Channel Island becomes full.

"We could possibly raise the dikes a little bit more," she said.

"Every couple of feet will give you quite a bit of capacity when you're talking about that big of an area."

She said "technological advancements" also could come along in another eight years to extend the facility's life, although she's not sure what those may be.

In the meantime, Corps officials visit the island at least once a month to conduct capacity surveys and inspect the dikes.

Recently, they took a 23-foot Corps boat to Channel Island, located two miles out into the bay.

Lynn Duerod, a Corps spokesman, was on the boat, seeing the facility for the first time.

Duerod said she thinks the Corps is about two years away from facing a "crucial need" to address the island's capacity. That could mean raising the dikes or, less likely, looking for space for a new dredging disposal site, she said.

Last fall, MCM Marine Inc. of Sault Ste. Marie began dredging about two miles of the bay channel under a $1.3 million contract.

The company expects to pipe more than 300,000 cubic yards of dredgings to Channel Island before the work is finished in October, said Ferguson, construction representative from the Corps' Detroit office.

"It's like a super vacuum cleaner," he said of the hydraulic dredging being done by MCM.

The dredgings - about 80 percent water and 20 percent sediment - take years before they turn from black gunk to what looks like fresh beach sand.

But "wash your hands," Ferguson cautions after a visitor scoops up a bit of the dried dredgings.

River mud deposited on the island is contaminated by historic pollution, but most of it's considered safe enough to put on the island without being covered with less-contaminated dirt, Ferguson said.

Channel Island is overgrown with vegetation, like pickers that stick to your pant legs when you walk.

Dead trees dot the island. They were drowned by the dredgings or guano from fish-gulping cormorants that populate the island, Ferguson said.

"The wildlife took it over," says Corps surveyor Rick Delestowicz of Bay City, driving the boat back to Bay Harbor Marina in Bangor Township.

"I think the only thing we haven't seen out here is bobcat and bear. That's not to say they're not here."